Additionally, playing consistent defense while fully-controlling your team is nearly impossible. Due to the game's goofy perspective, things go best when players are on auto-pilot. Selecting a player after the huddle to defend a play more or less commits you to that player because the camera angle maximizes that player's view and never pans out to give you a better sense of what's going on around you. As such, you'll be at the mercy of your AI teammates to protect you; this is especially so whilst defending against the pass. The devs tried to ameliorate this by letting you switch players on the fly. However, this causes the camera angle to shift wildly, making it very difficult to react appropriately. As such, you're better off just letting the play run its course, which is decidedly unsatisfying.

In the beginning, I hopped online, determined to play 100% hands-on; constantly switching players to always be part of the play. This led to me getting shelled every time. After taking my lumps, I soon learned that the blitz was more or less tantamount to a win button against human opponents. As such, I decided to just let the computer take over and see if the competition could compete with the pressure. Sure enough, I sent a blitz at my opponents every down and completely turned the tables. Because passing plays take so long to develop, and QBs can't adjust their throws sufficiently, even from blitz formations I was still picking balls off in the secondary, not to mention I completely nullified the competition's running game.

Playing against the CPU is a bit different; spamming blitz and forgetting coverage will get you in trouble. Nevertheless, trying to take control of the individual players is asinine. You're still better off calling for man coverage and then rushing a linebacker every play. If you do decide to sit back to dominate the passing lanes, you'll just get hammered. Again, the perspective is so poor for playing defense effectively, you'll never really know where the ball is going until it is too late. In the end, the game ends up playing like EA's "Be A Pro" modes (found in several of their sports titles), where you control just one player while the game goes on around you.

Of course, controlling one player at a time doesn't really affect gameplay on the offensive side of the ball, but offense suffers from loads of faults, too. For example, as fluid as the game evolves around you, things are surprisingly stiff whilst carrying the ball. Other than the uber-useful stiff-arm, moves such as jukes, hurdles, and spins are just as likely to take you out of bounds, back behind the line of scrimmage, or into the waiting arms of an oncoming tackler as they are to net you extra yards. Additionally, the passing mechanic is frightfully slow. In order to pass the ball, rather than hitting the receiver-appropriate face-button, you'll have to hold down the focus button and use the analog stick to lob or gun the ball in. While focused, you can't scramble or even make minor adjustments in the pocket. This leaves you wide-open to sacks.

Not only are the throwing mechanics pointlessly tethered to the analog stick, so too are the receiver routes. While in focus mode, you'll tap to the left or right in order to run through your receivers. This sounds simple enough, but it inevitably means you'll mistakenly pass to the wrong receiver. In fact, pretty much every offensive series I ended up passing to a covered receiver because the game interpreted my stick inputs differently than what I had intended. This is a serious control flaw that plagues the passing game. This game screams for the standard face-button control scheme, but it shuns it for no other reason than to be original.

So it is with practically every other aspect of Backbreaker; it seems like the devs did things differently for the sake of being unique. Unfortunately, more often than not, this leads to unsound gameplay mechanics. I could go on and on dissecting the game, pointing out its myriad flaws, but there simply isn't enough space afforded to me to do so. Besides, such tirades are boring to read. Just know that this game is full of missteps. That doesn't mean it is completely unrewarding, it just can't hang with the competition. In the end, this is a distinct take on football that is worth playing as a rental, but even at its discounted retail price isn't worth the price of admission.

By
Jonathan Marx
CCC Editor / News Director

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

3.5

GraphicsThe physics are great and the action is captured in a very visceral way. Unfortunately, the perspective and constantly-changing camera angles just aren't conducive to precision gameplay.

2.5

ControlControls are barely good enough. Passing, especially, is ludicrously implemented. Defensively, your best served just calling a money play and letting the friendly AI takeover.

2.5

Music
/ Sound FX / Voice ActingThe sound effects are fine, but hits sound like the popping of weak firecrackers. The lack of commentary is both a blessing and a blight.

3.0

Play
ValueThere is some fun to be found here, but the novelty wears off too quickly.

2.8

Overall Rating -
AverageNot an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.